The Matrix?

The movie “The Matrix” offers a compelling metaphor for life in 21st century as the world perceives it. The great deception being that the physical world around us – our present reality: what we can taste, touch, see, hear and smell – is all there is to life.

What is the Matrix? It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.
– Morpheus

If there is something above and beyond, it’s not relevant to our tangible daily needs, desires or struggles. Even if God is real: “God helps those who help themselves”, right? Therefor, life by necessity revolves around us and what we can do (making money, getting ahead, providing for our family, living the good life, doing some good, perhaps leaving a legacy).

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. – Romans 12:2

As a result of this deception, we have become slaves to the world’s value systems. Slaves to money. Slaves to career. Slaves to man’s expectations. Slaves of self-reliance. Trapped in “The Matrix”, if you will. Not comprehending the shackles of our slavery.

But, make no mistake, these value systems are intelligently designed to herd you and I into a life of limited eternal purpose, such that we end up expired worthless. They are designed to bend a man’s free will into conformity, a conformity that fuels and reinforces the same systems of slavery for still others. There is a battle raging between good and evil on an unseen field, fighting over the souls of men.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. – Romans 7:15

In reality, we are eternal beings created by God. When we trust and believe in His Son Jesus Christ, allowing our sinful, self-centered nature to die, we realize that He who made the world also loves us. He redeemed us from every slavery by the Blood of the Lamb. He cares and provides for us as His own child.

He gives us true purpose – purpose beyond ourselves and beyond our needs. And the Power to fulfill it. We are not alone. God wants to set us free – but we have to choose this freedom: it’s a ‘blue pill’, ‘red pill’ decision. Conformity (to the ‘Matrix’) or consecration (set apart – walking with God).

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. – 1 Corinthians 2:12

Let us return to walking with God, building that city of living stones, loving and serving one another as God has loved us – a Kingdom that cannot be shaken – that City shining on a hill.

We were building toward it once. The Pilgrims, the great Puritan migration, the First Great Awakening, the Revolution, the Second Great Awakening, the abolition of slavery, WW I and II, the reestablishment of Israel – all stand as witness of what’s possible. One Nation Under God. Remember? Somehow we got off track. But by the grace of God, we can return. Let us restore what God has envisioned for mankind. Let’s build a Kingdom that cannot be shaken into all of eternity.

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. – Matt 5:14

The Truth is out there Neo… it’s time to “unplug”

Am I a Slave?

Morpheus: Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Neo: The Matrix?

Morpheus: Do you want to know what IT is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

The god of this world has blinded the minds of many, keeping them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God – 2 Cor 4:4

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind…. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. – 2 Peter 2:19

What is Real?

Morpheus: You wanted to know what the Matrix is Neo?

Neo: Right now we’re inside a computer program?

Morpheus: Is it really so hard to believe?

Neo: This…this isn’t real?

Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ – Colossians 2:17

Systems of Slavery?

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system Neo. That system is our enemy. When your inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen. Teachers. Lawyers. Carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. – Romans 6:16

Am I Being Used?

Morpheus: What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this:

Everyone born of God does not keep on sinning… [yet] the whole world [around us] lies in the power of the evil one. Keep yourselves from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts – 1 John 5:19